Butterfly: Terminal in A Browser

Productivity Sauce

Mar 27, 2014 GMT

Dmitri Popov

A terminal and a browser are the most important tools of any Linux user. And Butterfly allows you to combine both. This clever solution lets you use a browser as a terminal, so you don't have to constantly switch between the browser and the terminal. Butterfly is written in Python, and the utility can be deployed in a matter of minutes. Run the pip install butterfly command as root (to use pip, you need to install the python-pip package first). Launch the server using the butterfly.server.py command, and you can then access the terminal by pointing your browser to http://127.0.0.1:57575. If you want to log in to the shell as a different user, you can do so by appending its name to the URL. For example, to log in as root, use the following URL: 127.0.0.1:57575/user/root. You can also allow other users to connect to the terminal on the machine running Butterfly by starting the server with the --host parameter as follows: butterfly.server.py --host="0.0.0.0". Keep in mind, though, that this approach is not secure.

Butterfly has another clever trick up its sleeve: quick history text selection. Using the Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow keyboard shortcut you can switch to the selection mode and then use the Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow and Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow shortcuts to select the text you want. Press Enter to paste the selected text to the prompt.